Bringing you the horribly depressing and hopefully uplifting human rights headlines from around the globe ...

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

8 March 2011 - International Women's Day Edition

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY Special Edition

Folks, today is the 100th Annual International Women's Day. As you may or may not know, women's human rights issues are very near and dear to my heart. I hope you will check out some of the links and stories below and celebrate women with me today.

While some argue that women have gained many rights and are now on an even footing with men, the numbers tell a different tale (check out UNDP's Gender Inequality Indexhere). Despite the disparities in income, wealth, education, property ownership, opportunity, legal protections and basic respect as parents and homemakers, my focus is upon the great untapped resource of womenglobally, in the arts, sciences, economics, politics, journalism, legal arenas, big business, armed conflicts, peace negotiations, the home and as leaders in general in our societies. Our international culture can and must be improved by an increased presence of women in all of these sectors.

• Philippines = Valenzuela City is celebrating March as Women's Month by organizing a series of celebrations “to underscore women's role in society and to further promote their human rights.”

• USA = TheInternational Center for Research on Women is hosting an eventthis evening in Washington, DC bringing together “social pioneers for a conversation on breakthrough innovations poised to transform the trajectory of women's lives” and then presenting their annual “Champions of Change” award.

• USA = The Tahirih Justice Center is also holding an event in Washington, DC tonight, to “celebrate the advances made over the last century, and to … fight to end global violence against women.”

IWD VIDEOS:

• UNWOMEN's online videos are all available here and they are awesome.

• Judi Dench narrates and Daniel Craig acts in this 2 minute video for International Women's Day. Dame Dench reprises her role as M, and Craig his role as 007, as Dench discusses the various natures of women's current inequities in the UK.

• Mallika Dutt from Breakthrough's talk was my favorite. She said (and I am paraphrasing), “we are at a moment of crisis and opportunity; UNWOMEN provides us the opportunity to make a turning point into a tipping point, where 'women's issues' are taken seriously in politics … especially because we know that male politics have failed (look at all our wars and at the current Jasmine Revolution), so let us catalyze the power of the international women's movement and bring that power to the table … the table which is round, and respectful and forward-thinking."

• I also really appreciated the words of Karima Bennoune, a professor of law at Rutgers, who said, “we need to maintain a vigorous championing of universality without exception because thedaily struggles as human beings (against sexual assault, e.g.) are the most important; we must all be unapologetic supporters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in every situation.”

• Sindi Medar-Gould from BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights also made some comments worth mentioning: “UNWOMEN must follow through on their international commitments; many nations sign the UN documents which support women's rights, but they never follow through; this is a deliberate political strategy because no one can be forced to implement the declarations they sign … UNWOMEN must look for and support gender-mainstreaming in very real ways, not just in ceremonial actions.”